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Annu. Rev. Sociol. 2003. 29:30733doi: 10.1146/annurev.soc.29.010202.100044

Copyright c 2003 by Annual Reviews. All rights reservedFirst published online as a Review in Advance on June 4, 2003

DAYLABORWORK

Abel Valenzuela, Jr.Chicana/o Studies and Urban Planning, University of California, Los Angeles,

California 90095; email: [email protected]

Key Words casual employment, contingent work, temporary work, nonstandardemployment

Abstract Day labor, the practice of searching for work in open-air, informalmarkets such as street corners or in formal temp agencies, has become an increas-ingly visible and important means of securing employment for a broad segment ofimmigrant, primarily male, displaced workers. Our understanding of day labor hasbeen limited by regionally focused or city-based case studies, poorly constructedmethodological approaches, inconsistent definitions, and little comparative research.This review discusses the emerging research on day labor, paying particular attentionto the practice of day labor, including the markets origins, its contemporary devel-opment, and its hiring and wage practices. The review also provides a synopsis of

informal, open-air and formal temp agency day labor practices, their spatial and or-ganizational configurations, and an outline of the legal issues and public policies thatstructure, to a large degree, worker and employer relations in this industry. The reviewemphasizes the multidisciplinary nature of contributions to the topic, including re-search by sociologists, anthropologists, and urban studies. Areas for future research aresuggested.

INTRODUCTION

The growth of nonstandard employmentpart-time work, temp agencies, con-

tract company employment, short-term and contingent work, and independent

contractinghas transformed work in significant and profound ways (Kalleberg

2000, Smith 1997, Beard & Edwards 1995). One component of nonstandard em-

ployment not well captured in the literature is day labor, which in the past three

decades has grown rapidly, making it an important component of the economy, a

significant segment of nonstandard and specifically contingent employment, and

an important employer of immigrant and other marginal workers in large and mid-

sized cities. Our understanding of day labor is primarily informed by city-focused

(to the neglect of national studies) case studies of hiring sites, poorly constructed

or singularly focused methods (rather than rigorous and multiple-method research

approaches), inconsistent definitions of day labor, and a lack of comparative re-

search. This review discusses the emerging research on day labor and suggests

areas for future exploration.

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308 VALENZUELA

A large part of the published research on day labor is exploratory, paying par-

ticular attention to uncovering the daily mechanisms of how the industry works,

its workers, its connection to local neighborhoods and economies, and worker and

employer relations. Over time, the industry has evolved from its orginal concentra-tion in large port cities that dispatched workers to primarily undertake agricultural

or stevedore work to additional locations in mid-sized, noncoastal cities that supply

workers for urban jobs, mostly in the construction industry. Finally, the industry has

become increasingly visible in low-income neighborhoods and busy intersections,

and it is locally dispersed. As a result of these developments, I review research on

the practice of day labor, including the markets origins, its contemporary devel-

opment, and its hiring and wage practices. The review also provides a systematic

overview of informal, open-air and formal temp agency day labor practices, their

spatial and organizational configurations, and a discussion of the legal issues andpublic policies that to a large degree structure worker and employer relations in

this industry. I pay particular attention to work undertaken in the fields of soci-

ology, geography, anthropology, and urban studies. The temp industry is large,

organizationally and occupationally diverse, encompasses many cities throughout

the United States, and employs thousands of workers from varying groups. There-

fore, my review only touches on the segment of the formal temp industry that is

restructuring down (Peck & Theodore 1998, Theodore & Peck 2002)that used

by homeless, undocumented immigrants, and similar marginal and low-skilled day

laborers.

DEFINITIONS AND CONTINGENT EMPLOYMENT

No formal definition of day labor exists, although the term is mostly used

to convey a type of temporary employment that is distinguished by hazards

in or undesirability of the work, the absence of fringe and other typical

workplace benefits (i.e., breaks, safety equipment), and the daily search for

employment.

Two types of day labor industries exist: informal and formal. Informal day laboris characterized by men (and, in a few cases, women) who congregate in open-air

curbside or visible markets such as empty lots, street corners, parking lots, desig-

nated public spaces, or store fronts of home improvement establishments to solicit

temporary daily work. Soliciting work in this manner is an increasingly visible

part of the urban landscape and is growing in the United States (Malpica 1996,

Valenzuela 1999, Valenzuela & Melendez 2003, US General Accounting Office

2002) and worldwide in countries and regions such as Mexico (Vanackere 1988),

Japan (Fowler 1996, Marr 1997, Giamo 1994, Gill 1994, Marr et al. 2000, Gill

2001, Valenzuela et al. 2002), and South America (Townsend 1997). Several im-portant characteristics identify the informal day labor industry and its participants:

The market is highly visible, with large hiring sites spread throughout metropolitan

Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, and other cities in the Southwest, the South,

and the Northwest. Most day laborers are male, foreign-born, recently arrived and

unauthorized, and have low levels of education and a poor command of English

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DAY LABOR WORK 309

(Valenzuela 1999, Valenzuela & Melendez 2003). As a result, the participants in

this industry are highly vulnerable and exploited.

The formal day labor industry is primarily connected to for-profit temp agencies

or hiring halls and places workers in manual work assignments at or aroundminimum wage. These temp agencies or hiring halls are less ubiquitous than

informal sites and are located in enclosed hiring halls with boarded windows or

other neighborhood-based establishments (Peck & Theodore 2001). Similar to the

informal day labor market, many of the participants are undocumented, recently

arrived, and have low levels of education. However, the participants of formal

day labor are more diverse than those of the informal market and also include

nonimmigrants, women, and a substantial homeless population. Participants in

this market are similarly vulnerable and exploited as evidenced by low wages,

infrequent employment, workplace injuries, and ancillary employment chargessuch as check-cashing fees for payroll and costly transportation charges to get

to the work site (Southern Regional Council 1988; Theodore 2000; Kerr & Dole

2001; Roberts & Bartley 2002, unpublished data; Tolchin 2001, unpublished data).

The informal day labor market primarily provides temporary job opportunities

that last from 1 to 3 days in the broadly defined construction industry, which in-

cludes home refurbishment, landscaping, roofing, and painting (Valenzuela 1999).

In some regions, it also provides limited light industrial and factory work

(Valenzuela & Melendez 2003, Malpica 1996, Fowler 1996, Gill 2001). The formal

day labor markets, in addition to construction work, also offer temporary employ-ment in light industrial, factory work, loading and unloading, and warehouse work

(Theodore 2000; Kerr & Dole 200l; Roberts & Bartley 2002, unpublished data;

Southern Regional Council 1988). Both types of day labor are unstable, provide no

benefits or workplace protections, pay poorly, and are characterized by workplace

abuses such as instances of nonpayment, lack of regular breaks, and hazardous

work.

In Japan, where research on day labor is well established,1 the definition of

day labor is disputed, and as a result, the national number of men falling under

1Day labor became a significant issue and topic of research because of the visibly large

number of workers inyoseba(gathering places for casual laborers), which have the highest

concentrations of urban poverty and unemployment in Japan. During the period of rapid

economic development (approximately 19501973), yoseba also served as a refuge of

sorts for the unemployed, persons separated from (or kicked out of) their families, and

persons who did not fit the rigid structure of the Japanese company. In yoseba, displaced,

marginal, and unemployed workers can find day labor, cheap housing, and camaraderie.

The concentration of unemployed men and high rates of poverty, as well as the periodic

riots due to police mistreatment of laborers drew the attention of social science researchers,far-left-wing activists, mostly Christian missionaries, and the media. In addition, yoseba

became more prominent locales for research, activism, and philanthropy in the early 1970s

after the oil shocks when unemployment shot up even higher than the levels of the 1960s.

In the 1980s, the yoseba studies group (yoseba gakkai) formed and began publishing a

journal (Yoseba) on the topic, and the yosebabecame a place to study inequality, poverty,

and marginality in Japan.

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310 VALENZUELA

this varied category ranges from 42,000 to 1.26 million (Gill 2001). According to

Gill (2001, p. 23), the various definitions reflect direct translations of day labor

(hiyatoi rodosha), to daily worker because laborer corresponds more closely to

the Japaneseromusha, which is perjorative, implying unskilled, menial, and thuslower-status labor. In his ethnography of day labor in the Sanya district of Tokyo,

Fowler (1996, p. xiii) terms day labor as mostly construction workers who get their

jobs off the street. He slightly expands his definition by providing a geographical

or neighborhood account of the Sanya community and its workers who primarily

gather to seek work every morning at theyoseba, which includes open-air markets

(street corners) and public employment agencies.

In the United States, some regional variation exists, but day labor mostly

signifies men searching for work through informal or open-air markets such

as street corners, storefronts, or parking lots, or through formal temp agencies.Men standing informally at curbsides or street corners often refer to themselves

as jornaleros (Valenzuela 1999) or esquineros (Malpica 1996), a direct Spanish

translation of day worker or day laborer in the former and in reference to a cor-

ner in the latter. In New York and other New England cities, the location of men

gathering to informally search for work is often called shape-up (Leonardo &

OShea 1997) in reference to the stevedores that once lined up daily at docks and

ports in hope of getting hired for the day. In todays vernacular, men shaping-

up are undertaking day labor or jornalero work, the term used by the mostly

Spanish-speaking workers (Valenzuela & Melendez 2003). In the Midwest, daylabor is often used to describe the men that frequent, on a daily basis, the for-

profit temp agencies (Theodore 2000, Kerr & Dole 2001). To receive a work

assignment, day laborers must physically report to the temp agency office. Work-

ers are paid on a daily basis by payroll check. The staffing agencies that

employ day laborers do not usually provide professional or administrative white-

or pink-collar workers to client employers (US General Accounting Office 2002,

p. 7).

Even though these two categories (formal and informal) are used to basically

describe the same temporary work relationship, men searching for work on a dailybasis, other types of day labor exist and add a layer to the confusion of the term.

For example, the Bureau of Labor Statistics defines day labor as part of a litany of

contingent workers that includes independent contractors, on-call workers, temp

agency workers, and workers provided by contract firms (Polivka & Nardone 1989,

Polivka 1996).

Freedman first coined contingent work in 1985 in her testimony before the Em-

ployment and Housing Subcommittee of the House of Representatives. She used

it to describe a management technique of employing workers only when there was

an immediate and direct demand for their services, such as a temporary layoff orspurt in demand for a particular product. Since its initial use, the term has been

applied to a wide range of employment practices, including part-time work, tem-

porary help, service employment, employee leasing, self-employment, contract-

ing out, employment in the business services sector, day labor, and home-based

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DAY LABOR WORK 311

work (Kelleberg 2000). Contingent employment is technically used to describe a

variety of nonstandard work and arrangements such as the impermanent nature of

certain work arrangements, including low levels of job security, less-predictable

work hours, and the absence of traditional workers rights and benefits.To better assess the status and count of the contingent workforce in the United

States, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) operationalized its definition and

collected data on this population from the 1995, 1997, 1999, and 2001 Current

Population Surveys through a supplemental survey (Bureau of Labor Statistics

2001). Respondents who reported currently working in a temporary position were

asked about the type of temporary position as well as a battery of questions related

to their temporary jobs. As a result, the BLS has extensive and detailed data on

the self-employed, independent contractor, on-call worker, temp agency worker,

and day laborer, bringing to light, for the first time, important differences amongdifferent contingent work arrangements and characteristics of workers, and differ-

ences between contingent work and traditional work arrangements. Relying on this

survey to analyze day labor is problematic owing to definitional variations of the

term that make it difficult to distinguish between informal curbside, formal temp

agency, and other types of day labor. In addition, these data likely undercount

day laborers because of the BLSs inability to reach respondents who dont have

telephones or fixed addressescharacteristics that may apply to impoverished or

homeless day laborers. Nevertheless, in its most recent survey (2001), the BLS

identified approximately 260,000 day laborers nationally who wait on street cor-ners for employment. In Los Angeles County alone, one study (Valenzuela 2002)

identified between 20,000 and 22,000 day laborers who seek work each morning.

Despite the paucity of better national data, several studies provide important

demographic portraits of day labor in Los Angeles (Valenzuela 1999), Chicago

(Theodore 2000), Cleveland (Kerr & Dole 2001), Berkeley (Worby 2002), and New

York (Leonardo & OShea 1997, Valenzuela & Melendez 2003). As noted earlier,

day laborers share many similar characteristics: most are Hispanic, foreign-born,

recently arrived, male, undereducated, and possess a poor command of English.

There are, of course, exceptions to these characteristics, particularly in New York,where some informal hiring sites have female and non-Hispanic immigrant partic-

ipants (Kamber 2001, Valenzuela & Melendez 2003). Another difference, which

is in contrast to Los Angeless and New Yorks informal day labor industry, was

reported in Theodores (2000) study on homeless day laborers in Chicagos for-

mal temp industry. Researchers found that the majority of workers were African

American (80%), followed by Latinos (14%) and whites (3.4%), and that most

workers supported only themselves on their income from day labor.

ORIGINS OF DAY LABOR

The history of day labor has an uneven literary chronicle. In Europe, for example,

the practice is researched in an important text on open market enterprises (Mund

1948) but then receives little attention elsewhere, with most references viewing

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day labor as part of broader, casual, temporary, or marginal workers. Japans histor-

ical chronicle of day labor is more complete, with several texts written in English

(Leupp 1992, Fowler 1996, Gill 2001). In the United States, no single manuscript

captures the history of day labor, but rather it receives mention in studies of skidrow (Wallace 1965) and tramp or hobo work (Hoch & Slayton 1989, Allsop 1967),

stevedore or dock workers (Larrowe 1955), Mexican American history (Camarillo

1979, Romo 1975), and agricultural studies (Schmidt 1964). Whyte (1955), Liebow

(1967), Suttles (1968), and Anderson (1978) wrote about the social order, inter-

actions, and other activities of street corners, including employment. However,

these classic sociological and applied anthropology texts paid little attention to the

origins, labor market, and social processes of day labor work. Despite the paucity

of historical research on day labor, what is available provides insights into the

markets origins.The practice of men and women gathering in public settings in search of work

dates back to at least medieval times when the feudal city was originally a place of

trade. In England during the 1100s, workers assembled at daily or weekly markets

to be hired (Mund 1948, p. 106). Statutes regulated the opening of public markets

in merchant towns and required agricultural workers (foremen, plowmen, carters,

shepherds, swineherds, dairymen, and mowers) to appear with tools to be hired in

a commonplace and not privately (Mund 1948, p. 96). The City of Worcester

created an ordinance that required laborers to stand at the grass-Cross on the

workdays. . .

ready to all persons such as would hire them to their certain labor,for reasonable sums, in the summer season at 5 a.m. and the winter season at

6 a.m. (Mund 1948, p. 100101).

In Japan, short-term casual day laborers appear to have played a significant

role in the economy since approximately the middle of the seventeenth century

(Leupp 1992, p. 16). However, reference to day labor dates to the year 842 with

Hinin(literally non-people), a category that overlapped with mushuku, someone

who traveled around without a tsuko tegata (a sealed statement certifying that

the bearer was properly registered and had been granted permission to travel).

A Hinin was a person who had lost his rights of citizenship for some offense,typically failure to pay rice taxes. These people were struck off the village register

and forced to perform menial labor (Gill 2001). Gill also argues that day laborers

in Japan emerged from a culture of slavery and serfdom during the nominally

abolished slavery period of the Heian era (7941185), the Kamakura era (1185

1333), and the Muromachi era (3381573). He characterizes their history as a

long and continuous struggle between free workers attempting to express their

autonomy and employers and civil authorities who have sought to control them

and at times incarcerate them (Gill 2001, p. 13). His book provides a fairly detailed

historical overview of day labor in Japan, but its most important contribution isclearly his exploration of contemporary Japanese day labor.

Despite the excellent detail and important intellectual contribution that Gill

(2001) has made to the study of day labor in Japan, the utility of his work to

understanding this industry in the United States is limited for several reasons.

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First, although day labor is historically important and well documented in Japan,

it is currently a declining industry in Tokyo and other cities in the country. Sec-

ond, other important characteristics of this market show important distinctions that

limit the lessons that can be derived from a more detailed comparison between daylabor in Japan and the United States. For example, using data from surveys of day

laborers in Tokyo and Los Angeles, Valenzuela et al. (2002) analyzed the unique

characteristics of these two markets, comparing and contrasting the workers, the

demand for their employment, and the spatial dimensions of this industry. They

found that day laborers in Los Angeles are predominantly young, recent immi-

grants undertaking various jobs. In contrast, day laborers in Tokyo are aging and

mostly native Japanese displaced from Japans slouching postindustrial economy.

Third, the demand for this type of work is equally in contrast with day labor in

Los Angeles, which is more diversified, associated with a network of industries,and a consumer base that is broad and elastic; day labor in Tokyo is primarily

concentrated in construction and only caters to subcontractors or middlemen.

In the United States, temporary staffing services (e.g., Kelly Girls) have existed

since at least World War II and currently supply a large bulk of the temporary

workforce in the United States (Moore 1965). Less-formal temps or day laborers in

this country can be traced back to at least 1780 when common laborerscartmen,

scavengers, chimney sweepers, wood cutters, stevedores, and dock workers

are said to have sought new jobs each day (Mohl 1971). As early as the late

1700s, Irishmen were indentured to the Potomac Company of Virginia to digcanals throughout the Northeast toward the Midwest alongside free laborers and

slaves. A casual labor force proved to be more financially viable than indentured

servitude and slavery. Such a labor force could be laid off during bad economic

times, whereas servants and slaves had to be provided for with food and shelter.

Casual wage laborers worked by the year, month, and day (Way 1993). During the

early to mid-1800s, day laborers recruited from construction crews workedfor track

repairmen of railroad companies. Casual laborers (often off from construction jobs)

worked in a variety of unskilled positions (brakemen, track repairmen, stevedores

at depots, emergency firemen, snow clearers, mechanics assistants), and many ofthese workers were recent immigrantsChinese and Mexicans in the West and

Germans and Irish in the East (Licht 1983, p. 37, 42, 60).

Since at least the mid-1800s, shape-up sites in New York and other Northeast

ports provided a system of hiring dockworkers for the day or half-day (minimum

of 4 h) by seemingly arbitrary selection from a gathering of men (Larrowe 1955).

Under this casual labor system, longshoremen seeking work were forced to gather

on the docks every morning to await the shape-up call from a hiring foreman

signaling for the men to gather around him, usually in the shape of a circle or

horseshoe, to be selected for work for the day or a 4-h shift. The number ofmen seeking work typically outnumbered the available jobs. On the West Coast,

particularly in Seattle, longshoremen utilized the hiring hall for their daily search

of stevedore employment. The more orderly and regularized process of attaining

employment for dockworkers in the Northwest shared some of the same casual

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314 VALENZUELA

labor characteristics of the shape-up in that workers were not guaranteed work

every day and were dispatched on a need-for basis. However, unlike the shape-

ups, longshoremen were registered in a central hiring hall, they were picked for

jobs in rotation so that their earnings were more or less equal, and the halls closelypoliced the distribution of work (Larrowe 1955).

Wilentz (1984) documented that between 1788 and 1830, day laborers found

work along the waterfront, more than half of New Yorks male Irish workers were

day laborers or cartmen, and one quarter of Irish women in the city worked as

domestics. Martinez (1973, p. 8) noted that in 1834, a place was set aside on city

streets [New York] where those seeking work could meet with those who wanted

workers. This exchange worked for both men and women, with employment for

women (primarily African American) concentrated in the domestic labor market

sector. Currently, women search for day labor at informal sites much less frequentlythan do men. In Los Angeles for example, women do not seek work in this manner

(Valenzuela 2002), whereas in New York, researchers (Valenzuela & Melendez

2003) found two sites (out of 57) where women were searching for day labor.

In California, agricultural work was historically the principal form of day labor.

Traditionally, agricultural workers (hobos, casual workers) were drawn from urban

centers, including areas known as skid row or wino row (Harrington 1962, Wallace

1965, Hoch & Slayton 1989). As urban centers grew and agricultural work be-

came less appealing and less accessible, skilled and unskilled urban workers

became more common and gathering sites proliferated. Camarillo (1979, p. 156)found that in Santa Barbara during the 1910s and 1920s, a ready pool of Mexican

surplus labor was always available to any contractor who merely went to the vicin-

ity of lower State Street near Haley. Here the informal Mexican labor depotan

area where unemployed Mexicanos desirous of work assembledprovided the

various contractors with all the labor they needed at low wages. Similarly, Romo

(1975, p. 8182) found that between 1910 and 1914, labor recruiters would often

visit the center of downtown Los Angeles near the plaza known as Sonoratown

to hire day laborers. He argues that a concentration of Mexican businesses, the

Catholic Church, and inexpensive boarding houses attracted Mexican immigrantsto this part of town in search of temporary employment. Then as now, several eco-

nomic and structural forces mediated the growth of this market. For example, the

Great Depression was largely responsible for the flood of unemployed and home-

less men filling skid rows (Wallace 1965) who would then participate in casual

labor. World War II production and other important periods of economic growth

such as Californias agricultural industry also fueled day labor (Schmidt 1964).

Today, day laborers are numerous and are found throughout cities and regions in

the United States and elsewhere.

CONTEMPORARY DEVELOPMENT

Regional formations have historically characterized the racialization of day labor

in the United States. In New York, informal hiring sites were primarily frequented

by Irish immigrants (Wilentz 1984) or African-American women (Martinez 1973),

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DAY LABOR WORK 315

whereas in California, Mexicans were used in both agricultural and urban day labor

markets (Camarillo 1979, Romo 1975, Valenzuela 1999). The current concentra-

tion of Latinos, and to a lesser extent other non-European groups in day labor in

Los Angeles, New York, and other gateway and mid-sized cities, also draws onthe literature on globalization, economic restructuring, informality, and immigra-

tion, all of which are interconnected processes that also help us understand the

contemporary growth of day labor.

Globalization, Informality, and Immigration

Three linked and important macroprocesses help explain the contemporary growth

of day labor: globalization (Sassen 1991, 1998; Stalker 2000), informality

(Williams & Windebank 1998, Portes et al. 1989), and immigration (Portes &Rumbaut 1996, Portes & Bach 1985). Globalization and the restructuring of

regional economies, and the growth of informality, coupled with massive immi-

gration, have resulted in unique labor markets where demand for part-time, low-

skill, and flexible work such as day labor proliferates (Sassen 1984, 1995). Global

cities are important points of control and centers of finance for great multi- and

transnational corporations and locales for millions of inhabitants and workers un-

dertaking social, economic, and political exchange. Global cities connect to remote

geographies and points of production, consumption, and finance, thereby fueling

changing economic structures. Perhaps most importantly for this review, globalcities reproduce low-skill workers because of their bifurcated economies and grow-

ing concentration of foreign-born workers who respond to the demand for their

labor.

Economic restructuring profoundly affects who works, how one works, and

how work pays. Economic restructuring also helps us understand the origins and

growth of the day labor marketthe informal economy and the growth of flexibleor

contingent work stemming, in part, from a decline of the manufacturing-dominated

industrial complex of the postwar era and the rise of a new, service-dominated

economic complex (Sassen 1998). Leading the way in restructuring, global citieshave expanded their tourist and business (e.g., finance, banking, insurance) trades.

In large part, this trade leads to the creation of a tiered economy that includes

services in the hotel, entertainment, cleaning, and food industries. Similarly, a

number of smaller cities such as San Jose and Boston have grown tremendously in

their high technology industrial base, producing almost equally tangential effects

on the service-based industries that keep high technology workers satisfied and

low-skill workers, who provide household and other types of services, employed

(Sassen 1991, 1994).

As a result of restructuring and other economic, social, and political fissures,informal employment has increased in visibility. To be sure, informality exists

at the high and low end of the hourglass job strata and has grown considerably

since the 1970s. Sassen (1998) argues that informalization is embedded in the

structure of our current economic system, particularly manifested in large cities.

Informalization emerges as a set of flexible maximizing strategies employed by

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individuals, firms, consumers, and producers in a context of growing inequality in

earnings and in profit-making capabilities.

Informal work referred to as the underground sector, hidden work or the

shadow economy (see Williams & Windebank 1998) is paid work beyond therealm of formal employment. This work involves the paid production and sale of

goods and services that are unregistered by or hidden from the state for tax, social

security and/or labor law purposes, but which are legal in all other respects. There-

fore, paid informal work includes all legitimate activities where payments received

by individuals are not declared to the authorities. Informal employment also in-

cludes work in illegal activities such as prostitution, the manufacture and sale of

illicit goods, and drug peddling. Day labor, because it is cash based, unregulated

by the state, and mostly untaxed is considered informal. What is unclear, however,

is to what degree day labor is explained by this theoretical framework given thatthis industry is highly visible, at best legally ambiguous (see legal section below),

and primarily provides services or the production of licit goods.

Immigration during the past three decades, the largest wave in the history of the

United States (Immigration and Naturalization Service 1999), has also contributed

to the growth of day labor and other forms of temporary work. Several factors (i.e.,

labor demand, public policy, push-pull) explain increases in immigration to the

United States, with labor demand being the most useful for understanding the

contemporary growth of day labor (Portes & Bach 1985).

The new labor demand explains the continued inflow of new arrivals as theresult of the rapid expansion of the supply of low-wage jobs and the casualization

of the labor market associated with the new growth industries, particularly in

major cities (Sassen 1984, 1998). In addition to employing low-wage workers,

the expansionof the service sector also creates low-wage jobs indirectly through the

demand of workers needed to service the lifestyles and consumption requirements

of the growing high-income professional and managerial class who increasingly

require the services of day laborers to refurbish their homes and domestic workers

(see Hondagneu-Sotelo 2001) to care for the children, to cook, and to clean the

homes of the affluent. However, day laborers and domestics are only part of thisdemand. Other low-wage workers are sought as building attendants, restaurant

workers, valet car attendants, preparers of specialty and gourmet foods, street

vendors, gypsy cab drivers, dog walkers, errand runners, and so on. The fact that

many of these jobs are off the books and are open to anyone willing to work in

these types of jobs contributes to the growth of informality and explains the natural

draw of immigrants, particularly those without documents, those who are unable

to speak English well, and those who have few skills.

As stated earlier, research shows that day laborers are overwhelmingly im-

migrant, mostly unauthorized, concentrated in metropolitan areas, and primarilyLatino. As a result, three other important factors related to immigration and day

labor are worth noting. First, unauthorized immigration to the United States is large

and regionally concentrated, and immigrants are primarily from Mexico (Immigra-

tion and Naturalization Service 2003). According to the INS (2003), approximately

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DAY LABOR WORK 317

7 million undocumented immigrants were residing in the United States in January

2000, the last year for which an official estimate was undertaken by the United

States government. By far, California received the largest share of unauthorized

immigrants in 2000 over 30%. Texas and New York follow California with 15%and 7%, respectively. Second, immigrants in general reside in cities where day

laborers primarily search for work (Immigration and Naturalization Service 1998,

Fix & Passel 1994). Between 1984 and 1997, 25%50% of all immigrants intended

to live in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Houston, or Miami (Immigration and

Naturalization Service 1998). Finally, one of the most striking immigration trends

has been the shift from predominantly European to Asian and Latin American

country-of-origin stock resulting from the 1965 legislative changes to the National

Origins Act. For example, in 1960, 7 of the top 10 countries that send immigrants

to the United States were European. This pattern reverses in 1990, with 7 of the top10 sending countries coming from Asia and Latin America. In 2000, the leading

countries of origin for immigrants continue to be from Asia and Latin America.

Although published research on day labor does not yet contextualize itself in

the rich sociological literature on immigrant labor market incorporation, I am con-

vinced that future sociological research on immigration would benefit enormously

from this body of day labor literature. For example, the following questions could

be answered and incorporated into sociological literature: Is day labor a transi-

tion from temporary to permanent employment? Does this industry provide work

experience, respite from unemployment or layoffs, and/or occupational mobilityfor immigrants undergoing labor market, linear, or segmented processes of assim-

ilation? Finally, a concerted effort should be made to examine theoretically the

connection between day labor and the sociology of immigrant settlement, incor-

poration, and labor.

WORKING DAY LABOR

Getting Hired and Hiring Sites

Formal day labor hiring sites (temporary staffing agencies) have proliferated in

urban cities, occurring more frequently in low-income neighborhoods because of

the large supply of inexpensive, flexible, and easily available labor. For example, in

Chicagos inner-city neighborhoods, the temp industry has flooded both the Latino

and African-American communities, eager to take advantage of the pliable labor

pool and often becoming the largest local employer. They locate themselves near

places where low-wage workers can be found, for example, homeless shelters and

welfare offices (Theodore 2000, Peck & Theodore 2001, Parker 1994, Oehlson

1997). Despite the large amount of surplus labor available and the demand fortemporary day laborers, many of the workers who participate through temp agen-

cies do not secure work every day and when they do, only earn minimum wage.

Typically, the industry is characterized by long days, low wages, and lousy jobs.

Workers arrive at neighborhood temp agencies before dawn, usually at 4:00 a.m.

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or 5:00 a.m., to begin the wait for a job assignment. Some hiring halls organize

three shifts, doling out workers 24 h a day. Many workers often wait for several

hours before being dispatched to business clients on an as-needed basis. As a re-

sult, employment is unstable and participants in this market rarely secure work ona regular basis. Waiting at a hiring site is mandatory if one wants to be placed.

Workers are dispatched based on different criteria: the agency and its system of

allocating work, the experience of the worker, and dispatcher discretion (which a

worker can influence by accepting difficult, repeat work assignments, being reli-

able, and receiving favorable reviews from employers) (Peck & Theodore 2001;

Roberts & Bartely 2002, unpublished data).

The process of seeking work at formal hiring sites is highly structured with

clear rules regarding favored participants and the requisite characteristics required

for this line of work. For example, some agencies favor workers with documents,whereas others pay scant attention to fraudulent documents or do not require them

at all. Formal hiring sites that cater to day laborers are located in targeted neighbor-

hoods for the explicit reason of recruiting workers from a particular class status,

skill set, social background, and ethnic group, with Chicago favoring foreign-born

Latinos (Peck & Theodore 2001), the South preferring rural and urban African

Americans (Southern Regional Council 1988), and Tucson (Arizona) and Chicago

choosing vulnerable homeless workers (Roberts & Bartely 2002, unpublished data;

Theodore 2000). Although some skilled workers may have an advantage over oth-

ers in securing skilled work, most participants undertake assembly work, handpackaging, materials moving, and other unskilled manual-labor assignments in

the manufacturing and warehousing sectors. As a result of the large supply of day

laborers seeking work through formal temp agencies, the relatively low skill re-

quirements of the jobs doled out, and the difficulty in securing work on a daily basis,

workers in this market are substitutable and thus compete vigorously for day labor.

Unlike formal temp agencies, informal day labor hiring sites operate under

seemingly chaotic or unstructured processes. For example, some informal gather-

ing places stretch over a mile, others occupy a single corner or section of a parking

lot, new sites appear, old ones vanish, and some sites are highly vulnerable topolice harassment, whereas others receive little to no attention from city officials.

The cost of entry is almost nonexistent, no formal rules or regulations are visi-

ble, and workers and employers come and go as they please. Finally, the supply

of workers is highly elastic, competition is rigorous and cutthroat, and workers

are interchangeable, thereby fueling a divide and conquer atmosphere at informal

curbside hiring sites.

An archetypical informal or curbside site would have between 30 and 40

men waiting expectantly for passersby in pickup trucks or vans. As a prospec-

tive employer arrives, groups of men crowd the vehicle and aggressively point tothemselves and communicate their availability. Employers select the worker based

on different criteria. If the employer is frequenting the hiring site for the first time,

she/he will hire men based on ascribed characteristics such as size, ability to com-

municate in English, or some other marker of human capital or work experience

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DAY LABOR WORK 319

such as spotted white painter pants and work shirts in the case of an experienced

painter (Valenzuela 2002, Worby 2002). Otherwise, employers returning to the

same site look for men who have worked for them previously. Wages for the hour,

for the day, or for the task are usually negotiated after the worker is selected. Thenegotiation usually takes place in the car en route to the job site or shortly after

the selection of the worker while still on the curbside. Further negotiation can take

place at the work site if the job is larger or more difficult than originally described

at the hiring site. Many employers add to the frantic atmosphere by vociferously

stating their hourly rate of paya strategy used to undercut the going rate by

bargaining with several workers, with the winner offering the lowest bid. This

frenzied approach is common at informal hiring sites.

Malpica (1996, p. 81) argues that beneath these chaotic surface appearances

is an informal social organization that imposes considerable structure on day la-bor. To make his case, he applies the structureless labor market model (Fisher

1953, Phelps 1957) and argues that despite a relatively close fit of an unstruc-

tured market, day labor has structure in at least two important dimensions:

Repeat employers who rehire the same workers reduce substitutability, thus im-

posing structure, and a male supply of workers, which similarly imposes orga-

nization along gendered lines. A number of day laborers are hired repeatedly

by the same employer or have a few employers who more or less regularly hire

their labor. However, the vast majority do not, and most workers are hired on a

one-job basis, thereby weakening Malpicas lack of substitutability equals struc-ture argument. Workers standing curbside, waiting for or frantically searching

for work are highly substitutable when it comes to performing labor-intensive,

dirty, or dangerous work that most non-day laborers would rather not perform.

Malpicas second point, however, has merit and does provide evidence of struc-

ture at least along gender lines. Clearly, immigrant status and race also play a

role in structuring informal day labor. Although day labor is open to anyone,

women, with a few minor exceptions in New York (Kamber 2001, Valenzuela

& Melendez 2003), are excluded. Even though African-American, white, and

Asian men are not excluded based on their gender, their race and immigrant sta-tus seem to be factors preventing their participation in regional day labor mar-

kets such as Los Angeles (Valenzuela 2001), New York (Valenzuela & Melendez

2003) and other parts of the United States (Peck & Theodore 2001, Worby

2002, Foster 2000) where immigrant Latinos almost entirely occupy this market.

Informal hiring sites share similar characteristics with their formal counterparts.

For example, many of the workers who participate do not secure work on a daily

basis; the workday is typically long, with most day laborers gathering at 6 a.m. and

departing in the afternoon if they have not secured work; and when they do secure

work, it is often labor-intensive and dirty. Many workers often wait several hoursbefore securing work for the day, and despite their dutiful gathering each morning,

day laborers often experience bouts of unemployment that last several days, and

periods of unemployment lasting several weeks are not uncommon (Valenzuela

2001, Peck & Theodore 2001, Kerr & Dole 2001).

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SPATIAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL CONFIGURATIONS

Formal day labor hiring sites often occupy run-down storefronts, often with boarded

windows in economically depressed inner cities. Their offices are small with a sin-gle large room, three fourths of which is filled with seats for the workers, with

the other quarter divided from the workers, serving as an office for the dispatcher.

These often shabby and unkempt hiring halls are numerous in communities where

large supplies of marginal and readily available workers live and willingly take

jobs secured by temp agencies (Peck & Theodore 2001). In Chicago, where neigh-

borhood segregation is well documented (Massey & Denton 1993), formal day

labor hiring sites follow the status quo. Peck & Theodore (2001) map the location

of temp agencies for the City of Chicago and argue that the locational strategies of

temp agencies deliberately avoid the majority of African-American neighborhoodsin favor of largely Latino areas. As a result, they practice de facto discrimination

against non-Latinos and deploy crude screening and placement techniques to en-

sure that employers get the racial and nativity preferences that they seek (Peck &

Theodore 2001). As a result of locating in racialized neighborhoods, temp agen-

cies reflect and add to processes of labor market inequities. These sites serve to

reinforce Latino immigrant workers as the preferred hiring poolwho will search

for work through any means; they harden the stereotype of the unemployable or

unwilling African-American male, and they improve employment opportunities

for Latinos in several neighborhoods, thereby exasperating spatial mismatchesbetween the barrio/ghetto and suburbs.

Formal hiring sites are also varied and fall along large national corporate fran-

chise halls, smaller privately owned for-profit local halls, and nonprofit organiza-

tions usually run by homeless- or immigrant-rights and advocacy organizations.

Their size, goals, and locations suggest different organizational practices and treat-

ments toward workers. For example, nonprofits have fewer, lower, or no cost-of-

working fees for services such as transportation to work sites, equipment use

or rental, check cashing, or standing fees (usually charged to the employer and

discounted as overhead for the agency). Because these organizations are run byadvocate or aid organizations, a larger portion of the total fee charged to the em-

ployer is allocated to the worker, translating into higher wages per hour on average

than for-profit staffing agencies.

National and regional for-profit temp agencies have a highly exploitative em-

ployment relationship with workers, regularly charging them a cashing fee for their

daily check, requiring payment for transportation to the work site, holding a deposit

and charging a fee for equipment use, and generally paying only minimum wage

(Southern Regional Council 1988; Kerr & Dole 2001; Roberts & Bartley 2002,

unpublished data; Tolchin 2001, unpublished data). In Tucson, the fee typicallycharged to clients of formal day labor hiring halls is marked up by 100% over the

wage paid to the worker, who is typically paid at or near minimum wage (Roberts

& Bartley 2002, unpublished data). Roberts & Bartley (2002, unpublished data)

also found that earning outcomes in the form of real wages is partially driven by

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DAY LABOR WORK 321

the organizational form of day labor agencies, where working for nonprofit hiring

sites has a large positive effect. Alternatively, seeking work at a corporate-affiliated

agency seemed to decrease real wages, although this finding was not statistically

significant.In Chicago where the temp industry originated (Moore 1965), competition be-

tween hiring sites is fierce, reflected in tight profit margins and downward pressure

on costs (Peck & Theodore 2001). Unlike Tucsons oligopolistic temp industry,

mark-up rates of up to 100% are nonexistent. In Chicago, hundreds of temp agen-

cies dot the urban and suburban landscape, thereby creating a perfect competitive

industry, driving profit margins downward as agency after agency reacts to and

competes with one another. As a result, wages are predictably low, with the over-

whelming majority (82%) of homeless day laborers earning an hourly wage of

$5.50 or less and those who work regularly earning less than $9,000 per year(Theodore 2000). Kerr & Dole (2001) and Roberts & Bartley (2002, unpublished

data) reported similar wages, but factored in duty fees and taxes resulting in low-

ered real wages.

Day laborers temping in formal sites earn lower wages than their counterparts in

open-air informal sites (see below). Unknown, however, is the frequency of work

that day laborers contract through temp agencies; that is, how frequently are men

and women being dispatched to work during a typical week? As Roberts & Bartley

(2002, unpublished data) show, the organizational structure of temp agencies mat-

ters in mediating real wages. However, little is known about wage differentialsacross regions or cities and between spatial or neighborhood distributions of temp

agencies within a city.

Curbside or informal day labor hiring sites fall under three categories: con-

nected, unconnected, and regulated (Valenzuela 1999, Valenzuela & Melendez

2003). Connected sites represent informal hiring sites connected to some specific

industry such as painting (e.g., Dunn Edwards, Standard Brands), landscaping or

gardening (nurseries), moving (U-Haul or Ryder Rentals), and home improve-

ment (Home Depot or lumber yard/hardware businesses). These sites have scores

of men soliciting day labor in designated locales of a parking lot, sometimes,but not always, a matter of contention between store management and the work-

ers. Some merchants are tolerant and allow the workers a hassle-free job search,

whereas others are hostile, hiring security guards or calling the police to badger

the workers into leaving. A similar strategy is to corral the workers off their prop-

erty to the curbside or public sidewalk fronting their place of business (Esbenshade

1999, 2000; Toma & Esbenshade 2001). Ostensibly, the workers soliciting employ-

ment at connected sites do so for two primary reasons. First, they want to market

themselves for a specific skill or trade such as painting, landscaping, or moving.

Those soliciting work at Home Depot or other similar home improvement storesmarket themselves as handyman or generalist workers in construction. Second,

the ease of picking up work materials and labor is convenient for employers, thus

increasing the probability for getting hired throughout the day when the store is

open. In Los Angeles, connected sites are the most numerous and frequented site

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322 VALENZUELA

types (Valenzuela 2001), whereas in New York, unconnected sites dominate the

landscape (Valenzuela & Melendez 2003). Together, connected and unconnected

hiring sites make up the bulk of informal open-air day labor markets. Workers at

unconnected sites also face complaints from local merchants, residents, and lawenforcement, and their spatial and organizational configuration is similar to sites

connected to an industry.

Unconnected sites seemingly do not have any link to a specific industry but

may very well exist for other reasons such as foot or vehicular traffic, police

cooperation, historical reasons (i.e., a site has existed for many years), or prime

location in a specific community or intersection. Some sites are located in mixed

retail and industrial locations, such as one northern California site located next to

a lumber company that served as the convening point for the original day laborers,

but has since developed into a boutique and specialty store district catering to high-end shoppers (Worby 2002). If connected and unconnected sites are the bread and

butter of informal day labor hiring halls, then regulated or city-sanctioned sites are

the new kids on the blockquite literally.

Primarily in response to merchant and neighborhood complaints of scruffy,

unkempt men standing in medium and large groups, municipalities, church groups,

and community-based organizations entered the informal day labor business by

creating official or regulated open-air hiring halls (Esbenshade 1999, 2000; Toma

& Esbenshade 2001; Valenzuela 2000). These sites most closely resemble the

formal temp agencies that dole out day labor to clients but still retain much of theflavor that informal connected and unconnected sites, described above, have. For

example, their location is often centrally positioned or is near areas where vehicular

traffic is heavy and the workers are visible; wages are negotiated at the hiring spot

or en route to the work site; and at some sites, prospective employers drive through

the hiring hall to pick up the workers as they might do for fast food. However,

regulated hiring sites vary widely in regard to their organizational structure. They

range from sites that offer only partial shelter to elaborate worker centers or hiring

halls that have a broader mission such as training and educating day laborers in

a host of skills (e.g., English, citizenship, health) and labor market issues (e.g.,rights, claims, occupational safety).

The spatial configuration of informal day labor hiring sites follows three dis-

cernable patterns corresponding to the site types outlined above. Sites are created

or located in home-improvement and related stores (connected), in busy inter-

sections where informal sites have existed historically (unconnected), or council

districts or central areas of large and small municipalities (regulated). Unknown

are the wages or employment benefits accrued to day laborers for seeking work at

one or the other of these site types. What is known about the wage structure for

day laborers is based on several regional studies (Valenzuela 1999, Valenzuela &Melendez 2003) and case studies of one to several informal hiring sites throughout

the United States (Worby 2002, Cardona & Vilchez 1997, Malpica 1996, Braxton-

Brown 1998, Hacegaba 2001, Leonardo & OShea 1997). Wages and earnings of

day laborers searching for work at informal hiring sites are mixed and range from

minimum wage to well over $10.00 per hour.

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For example, in Los Angeles (Valenzuela 2002), the mean hourly reservation

wage for day laborers was $6.91. As a result, on average, laborers in Los Angeles

refused to work for less than $6.91 per hour, approximately $2.00 more than the

1999 federal minimum wage. The reservation wage fell to $6.21 per hour duringperiods of increased unemployment (wintertime, the rainy season) or when men

repeatedly had bad luck securing jobs. Because this figure is an average, many

workers had reservation wages lower and higher than this figure. The average

wage a day laborer received for a one-day job (nonhourly) was $60, although

it was not unheard of for workers to earn upward of $80100, depending on the

job being contracted. In Long Island (Leonardo & OShea 1997), daily earnings

were on average $66, with a range of $125 at the top end and $50 at the bottom.

Regardless of rate, the pay earned each week is highly variable, and the weekly

job schedule is constantly in flux owing to swings in demand, weather,and supply ofworkers. Adding to this variability are uneven rates of pay from different employers

and the inability of day laborers to secure employment consistently. Far from

stable, informal day labor work is difficult to obtain on a consistent basis. The

relatively good pay is usually offset by bouts of frequent unemployment and is

highly dependent on negotiating a fair, but nevertheless below market wage. The

mean number of days workers contract employment through informal hiring sites

ranges from 2.3 days in Los Angeles (Valenzuela 2001) to 2 to 3 days in New York

and northern California (Leonardo & OShea 1997, Worby 2002).

Unlike formal hiring sites, day laborers at informal sites have at least three addedadvantages regarding their earnings. First, day laborers are usually paid daily and

in cash. There are, of course, exceptions to this. Employers also usually provide

lunch. The expectation is that a day laborer is paid at the end of the workday.

Collecting pay at the end of the workday is especially beneficial to poor people

who often have no financial reserves. Second, day labor is effectively tax-free

because it is paid in cash or under-the-table; thus, a dollar in day labor wages is

worth more than a dollar in formal, taxed wages. Third, most day laborers negotiate

their wages. The ability to walk away from a job should not be underestimated,

especially if the job pays poorly, is dangerous, or is particularly filthy or difficult.Knowledge of the market value of skilled and unskilled jobs provides day laborers

with a keen advantage over their employers and non-day laborers. It allows day

laborers to undercut the formal market rate at a significant discount, yet permits

them to earn a rate significantly higher than similar work in Mexico or Central

America. Being able to negotiate a days labor well is key to successfully exploiting

this market, a fact not lost on Latino immigrants who come from countries where

bargaining is commonplace (Valenzuela 2001).

LEGAL ISSUES AND PUBLIC POLICY

Legal issues and public policy surrounding day labor focus on three important ar-

eas: (a) regulations (ordinances) that prohibit or restrict solicitation in public areas,

(b) immigration and employment protections for day laborers, and (c) the creation

of informal (regulated) and formal hiring sites. Published work on these topics is

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sparse, but a focus on these three issues is emerging based on available material.

Missing is an integrated and comprehensive overview of legal issues surrounding

day labor. For example, unclear are the legal, tax, and other ramifications of hiring

a day laborer. Less vague, but still murky, are the tax and legal responsibilities ofthe workers as well as their legal rights when workplace and employer abuses like

nonpayment of wages or an injury occur. Compounding the confusion is that many

of the workers are in the United States without legal documents, which may limit

their rights and similarly adds another dimension of legal responsibility for the em-

ployers who hire them. Public policy surrounding day labor is similarly disjointed.

However, the creation of informal sites, regulated by local ordinances, controlled

and run by community-based organizations or the workers themselves, as well as

legislation being introduced in Congress to protect day laborers across the United

States signifies a clear path toward prescription (US General Accounting Office2002). Analyzing the processes to create formal hiring sites and the advocacy to

develop and get a federal bill passed to protect day laborers would document an

important juncture in day labor, the move to formalizing or regulating this industry.

Furthermore, documentation and analysis of these policy processes would allow

for replication elsewhere. Currently, these policy interventions dominate practice

and thus scholarship in the move to formalize or regulate day labor.

The Prohibition of Day LaborVarious counties and cities have enacted laws that prohibit or restrict workers

from looking for day laborer. Esbenshade (2000) and the National Employment

Law Project (2002) surveyed antisolicitation ordinances across the United States

but failed to provide a comprehensive summary or pattern of the ordinances or

how policy makers might implement or develop similar restrictions. Esbenshade

argues that at least six important factors should be considered when analyzing an

ordinance. First, is the ordinance aimed specifically at day laborers or to anyone

speaking to a potential employer? Second, is an alternative space designated if a ban

is initiated and enforced? Third, does the ordinance regulate private and/or public

space? Fourth, what are the penalty provisions? Fifth, is the ordinance aimed at

employers, workers, or both? Finally, does the ordinance ban all solicitation from

a particular location or just vehicular solicitation? Ordinances reflect an attempt

by city or county officials to address issues of public safety as well as community

concerns over the presence of laborers. It is unclear, however, what impacts they

are making, in part because some types of bans have been found unconstitutional,

others are too difficult to enforce, and still others are vague in their wording.

In addition, these bans do not consider local economic fluctuations that can greatly

increase demand for day labor or alternatively make the market disappear.

Ordinances represent a struggle between community residents desiring public

safety or a certain neighborhood image and the free-speech rights of day laborers

to solicit work and economically provide for their families (Kornzweig 2000,

Calderon et al. 2002). Advocates for day laborers argue that workers are exercising

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rights guaranteed by the Constitution when speaking to individuals about finding

employment. They argue that the solicitation of employment is an expressive

aspect of speech. Local governments enacting these ordinances, however, argue

that they are restricting speech in a legally permissible way because the ordinancesapply evenly to all people, not just those looking for work, and the ordinance

allows for other avenues where laborers are able to solicit employment, such as

regulated sites, parking lots, parks, or other locations or venues such as formal temp

agencies.

Immigrant and Workplace Protections

Legal issues related to day labor primarily focus on the hiring of unauthorized

immigrants. Federal law makes it unlawful to hire, fire, or recruit for a fee any

alien who is unauthorized to work in the United States. Law requires that employers

verify documents entitling aliens to work. The exception to this rule is if the alien

is considered an independent contractor or a temporary domestic worker. For day

laborers, this issue is relevant because private individuals hire many laborers for

short periods of temporary employment, and the documentation requirements for

employers are ambiguous (Schoonover & Hyland 1999). As a result, employers do

not have to look for work authorization if the laborer is considered an independent

contractor or temporary domestic worker.

Legal issues surrounding workplace protections of day laborers exist to guard

workers from exploitation in the workplace. There are various state and federal

laws that protect workers involved in union activities, protections from discrimina-

tory findings, and protections from wage and overtime violations. Laws pertinent

to day laborers include protecting laborers who are not paid owed wages and those

that provide compensations for individuals unable to work because of injury or dis-

ability. Most of the laws make distinctions regarding undocumented workers and

independent contractors, categories day laborers will likely fall into. The distinc-

tion between employees and independent contractors is rooted in legal traditions

that limit employers liability for the misconduct of a person rendering service to

him or her. Thus, classifying day laborers as independent contractors, rather than

employees, makes employers exempt from having to provide protections for their

workers (Glader 1991). Existing laws fail to protect nonstandard workers includ-

ing day laborers (Emsellem & Ruckelshaus 2000). Related is the regulation of the

private market of temp agencies that dole out day laborers (National Employment

Law Project 2001) or to create community or nonprofit temp agencies that hire

out day laborers (Kerr & Dole 2001). Finally, immigrant advocates, labor rights

groups, and others are promoting policies that regulate employment conditions of

day labor (US General Accounting Office 2002).

The Creation of Official or Community-Based Hiring Sites

One of the more popular and well-established intervention strategies regarding

informal day labor is the creation of official or regulated hiring sites that are

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integrated into the local economy. Related to the creation of formal open-air hiring

sites are worker-developed sites that advocate popular or empowerment education,

democratic participation, and worker control (Foster 2000, Calderon et al. 2002).

The creation of a geographic space where workers and employers can come to-gether to trade labor for wages usually starts with trying to make peace between

contending factions (employers, workers, merchants, residents, law enforcement,

and city officials) and the formation of coalitions of community members. The ob-

jective is to work together toward solutions that bring consensus to as many actors

as possible for that particular community (Valenzuela 2000, Toma & Esbenshade

2001, Calderon et al. 2002, Love & McDonald 1997).

Official or regulated hiring sites are either financially sponsored by a city or

municipality, a community-based organization, or a private entity such as a home

improvement store. Regulated hiring sites offer prospective employers a variety ofday laborers from which to choose. On average, more men convene at this site type

than connected or unconnected hiring sites, probably because workers are provided

with shelter, bathrooms, modest sources of food (e.g., coffee, pastries, fruit), tool

exchanges and borrowing, and assistance with wage disputes. Employers can arrive

at any time between 6:30A.M. and 2P.M., 6 or 7 days per week. Most of these sites

have minimum wage standards and all wages are negotiable between worker and

employer (Valenzuela 2000, Toma & Esbenshade 2001).

Opening an official hiring site requires creative strategizing such as coalition

building among local police, city council members, church officials, and immigrantrights organizers. Local police are instrumental in convincing both employers and

day laborers that their exchange needs to be undertaken at the official hiring site.

Council members are similarly important in targeting city resources needed to

provide a public or private space for a hiring site. In addition, council members

and other city officials have the clout and connections to leverage city resources,

bypass zoning ordinances, confront city bureaucracies, urge merchant donations,

and instigate local and popular support for a hiring center. Immigrant rights or-

ganizations can work closely with the day laborers to ensure support or to prod

those who might doubt the value of a hiring site. They also serve to make knownthe concerns and needs of day laborers to city officials, residents, merchants, and

others (Calderon et al. 2002, Cardona & Vilchez 1997, Valenzuela 2000, Toma &

Esbenshade 2001).

Unknown is the real benefit of regulated informal hiring sites to the workers

in terms of wages and employment. The benefits are clearly evident to propo-

nents who advocated the creation of official curbside hiring sitesmerchants,

residents, elected and other city officials meet their objective of making invisible

or at least corralling and controlling the number of day laborers spread over sev-

eral city blocks or locales into one geographically contained center. The benefitsto immigrant rights advocates of creating regulated sites are also clear: They enter

the business of day labor usually managing these sites through grants; they curtail

community concerns, including mean-spirited and sometimes virulent actions; and

they empower workers through labor organizing. On the other hand, even though

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participants have a safe place to search for day labor, they lose their competitive

advantage of aggressively pursuing potential employers by participating in a hiring

queue; when the market is formalized or regulated through wage minimums, hiring

queues, and intermediaries (e.g., staff at these sites), it becomes less attractive toemployers, thereby decreasing their participation and thus demand. Analysis of

the real and perceived economic, social, and labor market benefits of regulated

hiring sites, particularly as they affect workers employment prospects and their

wages, is crucial to understanding perhaps the most important and viable policy

solution short of ignoring day labor or banning it.

FUTURE DIRECTIONS FOR RESEARCH ON DAY LABOR

The contemporary growth of day labor is ubiquitous in our largest and mid-sized

cities. The industry beckons employers for work, reconfigures disadvantaged la-

bor markets through their location in inner-city agencies and informal hiring sites,

and through insufficient wages and irregular employment, while undertaking haz-

ardous, dirty, and difficult jobs thereby extolling a mental and physical cost to

the participants. Despite the occupations long ancestry in the United States and

elsewhere, the study of day labor is only now emerging as an important empirical

and theoretical subject to explore. As a result, the literature unfortunately offers

an incomplete and at times disjointed analysis of this industry.Admittedly, a large part of the literature on day labor is still exploratory, with

much of the research focused on documenting the day-to-day activities of this

industry and obtaining a picture of how the market is organized with the exception

of formal day labor, which has a longer tradition of scholarship as a result of its

connection to the temporary for-profit staffing industry. Invaluable to establishing

a scholarly tradition on day labor, research on this industry needs to move be-

yond pure documentation to larger analytic explorations involving national, city,

and other comparisons. In addition, more thoughtful, rigorous, and variational

methods, including definitional clarity and operationalization, would significantlydevelop the field allowing for more empirical documentation, theoretical devel-

opment, and historical exploration. Finally, in-depth exploration and analysis of

worker and employer relations and market processes will aid in formulating legal

and policy prescriptions that may aid in upgrading the industry and protecting the

workers.

To date, no single text on day labor in the United States has been written; how-

ever, several important journal articles, international texts, theses, government and

think-tank reports, popular articles, and countless anecdotal and press clippings

have been published providing important insights on this burgeoning market. Myreview covers all of the important sociological issues addressed in this extant

literature, including multidisciplinary forays into geography, planning, anthropol-

ogy, and law. Nevertheless, four research questions on day labor warrant further

exploration.

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What Can We Learn About Day Labor fromComparative Research?

Regions and cities are different, and therefore, day labor in New York is likely to un-dergo different labor relations compared with Los Angeles, Houston, or elsewhere

in the United States. Similarly, international comparisons can provide important

insights about this industry. Different economic restructuring processes, receptions

toward immigrants and the workers, local market and neighborhood structures, and

a host of other macro and micro factors all likely contribute to unique day labor

processes from one region to the next. Therefore, documenting, exploring, and

analyzing these for each city in comparison with one another will contribute sig-

nificantly to our understanding of day labor. Similarly, international comparisons

provide analytically rich information from which to draw conclusions, contrasts,and insights on an industry steeped in history, fraught with exploitation, and em-

bedded in local economic markets. In Sanya, day labor is seemingly coming to an

end as the graying of day laborers continues with a mean age of 52 and a replenish-

ment pool nowhere in site (Marr et al. 2000, Valenzuela et al. 2002), whereas in Los

Angeles, the mean age of day laborers is 34 with an influx of workers seemingly

entering this industry daily (Valenzuela 1999). Does Japans day labor industry

portend the future for Los Angeles and other cities with substantial day laborers?

Region-specific studies on day labor have been undertaken in New York,

Chicago, Los Angeles, Tucson, and Cleveland. With the exception of New York(Valenzuela & Melendez 2003) and Los Angeles (Valenzuela 1999), no formal inte-

gration of these studies has occurred. As a result, we have individual (city specific)

case studies that, although extremely innovative and useful, fail to adequately give

us a picture of formal and informal day labor nationally. A national study on day

labor would go a long way to anchoring research on this subject, to estimating a

total count, and to accurately comparing regional and city differences.

Given the Industrys Fluidity, Unauthorized Workforce, andDefinitional Inconsistency, How Should We Best ResearchDay Labor?

Research on day labor is methodologically innovative and multimethod in part to

account for the fluidity of the market, the difficulty of getting day laborers (most

of whom are unauthorized immigrants) to participate, and the cloud of suspicion

that revolves around this seemingly informal market, which adds a further layer of

difficulty to explore. Ethnographic accounts of this market have been instrumental

to documenting and teasing out the nuances and particulars of the day-to-day activ-

ities of day laborers and the employers who hire them. Surveys provide important

demographic, wage, and other data that allow for complex modeling and broader

generalizations than ethnographic approaches. Further research and methodolog-

ical development should be directed at the selectivity bias of interviewing men

at hiring sites to the neglect of those that are hired. The bias likely falls on those

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DAY LABOR WORK 329

day laborers not getting work, less experienced solicitors, or those who do not

aggressively pursue prospective employers.

Even though most of the studies on day laborers cited in this review employed

random selection procedures to obtain participants, not being able to identify theuniverse population, the difficulty in controlling for daily and seasonal fluctuations

of men searching for work through this industry, and the fluidity of hiring sites

allow for only limited generalizations. Sampling frameworks and methods that

are more rigorous and that account for fluid or impossible to identify universe

populations need to be implemented for research on this industry. Definitional

clarity and operational measurements are also critically important and lead to

methodological consistency and rigor.

What are the Historical Origins and Theoretical Frameworksthat Anchor Day Labor Research?

Day labor is grounded in globalization, informality, immigration, and nonstandard,

contingent employment. Although all are interconnected, and each speaks to day

labor and its contemporary origins, its participants, and employers, the demand for

this industry, and labor relations, only contingent employment as a labor market

framework addresses adequately the historical and economic embeddedness of day

labor and some of the unique labor relations between day laborer and employer.

However, at present contingent employment theory fails to specifically engagein day labor. Instead it focuses primarily on independent contractors (Kalleberg

2000) rather than other types of contingent workers (Beard & Edwards 1995)

such as on-call workers, domestics, and day laborers. Theory conceptualizing day

labor in labor studies, be it contingent labor or another framework, needs to be

written.

In addition, a complete historical overview of day labor in the United States is

painfully missing. At best, we have historical references to day labor from other

texts focused on labor, ethnic studies, homeless, transients, and the working poor.

We know day labor is an important industry in the history of labor relations in theUnited States; it has certainly been chronicled in the historical and contemporary

development of other industrialized nations such as Japan. A historical treatise on

day labor would make a large contribution to this topic.

What Are the Supply and Demand Side CharacteristicsThat Explain Employer and Day Laborer Relations, theOrganization of Day Labor Work, and the Industry Itself?

Numerous labor market topics on day labor are there for the taking. For example,

unknown are the explicit details and processes of the wage structure (i.e., per hour,

per day, per contract), the frequency of employment, and related, the transition,

if any, from temporary to permanent employment. Are there regional differences

to frequency of hire and wages, and does it matter in terms of the same outcomes

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330 VALENZUELA

where, in a local context (i.e., Los Angeles), you stand (e.g., connected, uncon-

nected, regulated, temp agency) while searching for day labor? How important

or negligible is human capital in a market that seemingly has perfect substitution

and workers are virtually indistinguishable from one another? How important isexperience, years of residence in the United States, and command of English in se-

curing day laborparticularly when employers really have no way of confirming

these types of attributes? These and countless other labor market research topics

on the supply side of the day labor market await analysis.

The demand side of day labor is even less known. No single research article,

report, thesis, or popular press pays more than anecdotal, at best scant, attention

to employers who hire day laborers. Who hires day laborers? Most anecdotal and

some survey evidence (Valenzuela 1999) suggests that contractors, subcontractors,

employees of large firms and smaller mom and pop outfits, as well as individualsneeding help on their homedo it yourself typeshire day laborers. Besides the

obvious below-market hiring rates and ease of availability, what motivates employ-

ers to seek day labor? In addition to the cost-savings factor, what labor relations

benefits are realized from hiring day laborers? These and other topics related to

the demand for day labor have yet to be explored and written. Finally, broader top-

ical issues regarding day labor, immigration, occupational hazards and workplace

abuses, and public policy should be explored empirically and theoretically.

The growth of day labor, its visible presence, its coverage in national and local

newspapers, and its burgeoning attention in social science journals and texts, topicsof graduate student inquiry, and studies of community-based and political, legal,

and advocacy organizations highlight the industrys topical development. The day

labor industry is a potentially useful topic for research that captures marginal

workers, global and migratory processes, contingent employment and other labor

market relations, and merges multidisciplinary research between these structures

and the individuals who perform day labor. Future work on this important topic

rests on social scientists ability to innovatively capture the macro and micro factors

that structure the world of work and the everyday lives that lead men (and some

women) to seek work daily on street curbs or temp agencies in the face of poorwages, inconsistent employment, and difficult and hazardous work.

TheAnnual Review of Sociologyis online at http://soc.annualreviews.org

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